Influence of thermal history on the structure and properties of silicate glasses

TL;DR

This study investigates how thermal history affects the structure and properties of silicate glasses, revealing significant changes in density fluctuations and contrasting behaviors in local order and mechanical properties.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of float glass and silica, highlighting the impact of fictive temperature on nanometer-scale density fluctuations and structural properties.

Findings

Density fluctuations increase with fictive temperature in both glasses.

Local order and mechanical properties of silica vary oppositely to float glass.

Structural modifications at the local scale are minimal.

Abstract

We studied a set of float glass samples prepared with different fictive temperature by previous annealing around the glass transition temperature. We compared the results to previous measurements on a series of amorphous silica samples, also prepared with different fictive temperature. We showed that the modifications on the structure at a local scale are very small, the changes of physical properties are moderate but the changes on density fluctuations at a nanometer scale are rather large: 12 and 20% in float glass and silica, for relative changes of fictive temperature equal to 13 and 25% respectively. Local order and mechanical properties of silica vary in the opposite way compared to float glass (anomalous behavior) but the density fluctuations in both glasses increase with temperature and fictive temperature.